Europe, UK & Greece Trip 2006

So we are back in Sydney, Australia.

The trip home was better than the trip over, I think we were better prepared for the long, long journey. Our flight included a 2 hour stop over in the new larger Bangkok airport, much better than the old one.. especially cleaner & cooler.

As prediectable we didn’t get much sleep, and just watched 5 movies over the 22 hour journey. My only regret was the stopover was only 2 hours.. there are new massage shops, and a full foot or shoulder massage was 45 minutes and only 500 Bhat (or AUS$17). By the time you disemabark, walk from end to end (arrival gates & departure gates were at opposite ends), and need to be the departure gate 30 minutes beforehand, and wait in the queue for a massage, there was not 45 minutes left … [note to diary: next time allow more time in Bangkok stopover]

We arrived on time in Sydney at 8pm, and James was waiting for us. Ellie arrived 40 minutes early, so was thru customs and met James by the time we landed. Ellie’s classmates & teachers were still hanging around waiting for parents, so it was good to see them all.

We worked out that James had a few more hours sleep in the last 24 hours than us, so James chauffeured us home.

After settling in, finding the house neat & clean, and catching up with highlights of Ellie’s trips, and James’ 4 weeks of batch’ing, we headed for bed arround 11pm…. jet lag then took over as Ellie, Liz & I did not awake till 1pm next day… although I did hear James go off to woke at 8:30am.

So today, less than 24 hours after arriving home life was obviously back to normality…. opening the mail, shopping (James hadn’t restocked the pantry), washing, cooking, I ran a church property meeting, Liz started preparing for taking a Church service on Sunday et cetc … except Liz & I can’t sleep, so here we are writing the closing blog at midnight.

Overall, Liz & I found the trip really a great experience, as one does in hindsight when you get home,… as you only recall all the positive things you did & saw. And we came in only 1% over budget!!

It does make you realise how big & different the world is. Personally I found the trip a very humbling experience.

Blogging was a fantastic way to communicate our experiences with you. Being a daily journal we have been able to record the highs and lows of the trip… something often lost in hindsight.

Thankyou to all who posted comments, it was great to get messages from home. It was remarkable to have 1500 website hits in 4 weeks… James we should have put advertising links on the website, and made some money!!!

Here is the estimated number of people who looked at our website each day.

I will turn this Blog into a paper book with a few more photos, as an easy way to capture our memories .. a good coffee table book (Ellie ??).

We must thank our Trusted Advisors, without whose help, experience & knowledge this trip would not have gone so well…..

So thanks to Carolyn, Merryn, Michael, Norman, Eileen, Christine, Kirsten, Fiona, Meg, Maddee, Sam, Mia and finally Martin @ FlightCentre.

Our last full day in Greece – in sunny downtown Athens (and our last blog from overseas – for anyone who is still checking in to see what we are up to – hope we haven’t been too boring – the blog will be a wonderful record for us of our trip)

Our five star restaurant in Athens served us up a very nice buffet breakfast with lots of choice. The hotel also provided a free shuttle bus into the centre of Athens which we eagerly took. Our first sightseeing stop was to watch the changing of the guard – no we are not back in London, the Greeks do it too, outside Parliament House, – traditionally dressed Greek soldiers dressed in their white skirts and leggings and pom poms on their shoes, accompanied by a naval marching band.

We then wandered through the Flea Markets of Athens, with hundreds of others and made our way to the Acropolis hill.

We  hired a guide and discovered the treasures of the Parthenon and various other temples situated on a high hill with an amazing view over Athens – it is a big city hemmed in by stunning hills. As we listened to the guide tell us about some of the greek myths and the teachings of Socrates and Plato it was interesting to note how much of Christianity’s ideals have their roots in Greek mythology and Greek wisdom teaching. The pantheon is an impressive ruin which they are working hard to preserve.

We then joined with thousands of locals having a late Sunday lunch in the many outside cafes in central Athens. We stopped to listen some Peruvian musicians – I liked their music so much I bought their CD.

Back at the hotel I enjoyed a swim in the rooftop swimming pool while John enjoyed some internet time. Our last dinner in Greece was in the hotel restaurant, not a particularly Greek atmosphere but a delightful meal with vegetables! How I am missing eating fresh vegetables. Many Greek dishes come with little or no vegetables. I enjoyed my vegies tonight. 

Ah well, last night of our holiday, tomorrow we jump on the plane for that long trip home………

Saturday, we awoke to a lazy morning, hardest thing was to find out the AFL Grand final Score, giving up on Greek, CNN & BBC TV & finally resorting to www.afl.com.au to learn Sydney lost by one point. After a leisurely start we wandered down to the Mykonos town again, daring to re-enter the maze, found a restaurant for lunch .. too many restaurants to chose from … eventually we sat down to a simple meal…then we wandered back to the hotel for an afternoon by the pool… and yes another Lemon, Lime & Bitters (since we had trained the barman). What is becoming the “norm” for us – we had an interesting trip to Athens…

• our coach from the hotel to the airport forgot to pick us up, and had to come back for us; the hotel was only 7 minutes from the airport, so was not a bit deal, just angst.
• the Olympic Airlines plane was only a 50 seater propeller plane, a new experience for Liz – travelling in a small plane, the trip was smooth (noisy) and quick.
• the taxi trip from the airport to central Athens, last week cost €48 (AUD$80) travelling at 160kph, ….. this time only cost  €25 (AUD$42) travelling at 120kph. The signs at the airport indicate a typical taxi trip to the city should be €35 ??
• upon arriving at our central Athens boutique hotel, we were informed there was a problem with our room, and it had not been fixed, hence as they were booked out, they had arranged for us to be transferred to another 5 star hotel, and they would pay for the taxi ride.

Whilst our new hotel, the Metropolitan is quite nice (typical large 5 star hotel), it is 2 kms out of town, near the bay, hence we lost our advantage of being able to go for a walk thru the central city streets, where all the night action is, and also walking to the Acropolis tomorrow…

I  am (ie: we are, & Liz blogging) sitting relaxing on a lounge chair beside the hotel swimming pool , the barman has learnt how to make “lemon lime & bitters” for us and has now just served us strong filtered coffee (its impossible to get weak coffee in Greece!! – actually this cup is about the best I have had all holidays!). The sun is shinning, the sky is reasonably clear, and there is a light breeze.

We did swim in the pool for a few minutes, though I wish the Greeks would find out about solar heating for their pools – the water is freezing.

Well I think the island has redeemed itself, the main town of Mykonos is so much nicer then Fira on Santorini. It is certainly still made up of shops and restaurants but is located on the sides of two pretty bays with beautiful clear water lapping at the edges. I suppose it is a bit more like the Greece we imagined. 

Last night we found this restaurant with tables right up close to the waters edge overlooking the setting sun. It was nearly a Shirley Valentine experience where she dines with her table and chairs being lapped by the Agaean Sea. Could have sat there all night, it was delightful. It was in a part of the town they call Little Venice because the water of the bay laps the foundations of the buildings. So Ellie is in Venice and we are in Little Venice.

Even though the main town of Mykonos is much smaller the Fira in Santorini we had an interesting experience walking back to our hotel. Instead of following the waters edge we decided to cut through the shops which of course were still all open with hundreds of people around walking up and down the laneways (there was a cruise ship in town, tonight there are 3!!).

We headed off in what we thought was the right direction but whenever we tacked left or right in an attempt to come out the other side of the town we would always come to a dead end or we would find ourselves wandering back up streets we just walked down. This continued for sometime. It was like a giant maze, and because the buildings are two stories high and the laneways narrow and keep changing direction you can’t see far enough ahead to get a sense of where you are heading. We felt rather foolish. We ended up retracing our steps back near to our starting point near the restaurant and then followed the waters edge – that way we knew we couldn’t get lost. By the time we had walked up the steep hill to our hotel we were exhausted and sweaty.

Today is Friday and it is very warm. It is not long now before we head home and it is difficult to not start thinking about jobs and household chores and the normal routine.

We jumped back on another boat to visit the island of Delos with its famous archaeological site with ruins from the 6th century BC – ruins of houses and shops with beautiful Greek columns, including a house where Cleopatra of Greece lived, and a Sanctuary to the god of Apollo (the myth says that he was born here), there are also ruins of other people who lived there including the Romans and the Jews. The museum on the island holds a multitude of statues and vases and ordinary objects that have been carefully excavated from the site and carefully put back together. It was a fascinating place and well worth the visit though tiring with lots of walking in the hot sun.

We have spent the rest of the day having a siesta and then relaxing beside the pool. And now to begin thinking about dinner  – where shall we dine tonight? Not having to cook is just wonderful!

We back tracked thru Mykonos town, looking for a restaurant we saw in the previous nights lost wanderings; could not find it, so we chose a wonderful outside restaurant, under a pergola covered in a bougainvillea in full bloom. With Greek music in the background, and a giant eucalypt free above the bougainvillea, we enjoyed our traditional Greek dishes (food is getting better), and watched the waiters entrap passing tourists to dine in their restaurant .. there is quite an art to it and a obvious strategy or ploy.

We have local TV (all Greek to me) and the luxury of Satellite TV ……… 500 channels !!!, of which there are only broadcasts on 300 channels when I flicked thru them, of which 30% are “Adult only”, and only 9 english ones, made up of 6 American religious channels .. a few cartoon channels, and that leaves BBC World news as the only watchable channel, which repeats every half hour… so becomes boring quite quickly… back to just reading books and gazing on the vista….

We do have “The Goodies DVD” with us for emergencies. We did find on satellite TV the Gilmore Girls dubbed in German which made interesting watching (for 5 minutes).

So far we had driven around the island, and walked around directly near our villa. Tues & Wed nights we walked more into the main town of Fira, and found lots of tourist shops, restaurants & people, and the life of Santorini…. This is why people come, not for the baron landscapes, … they come to shop, sit in restaurants, shop, shop and more shopping and exploring all the narrow laneways (smelling of donkey urine) and of course looking at the magic sunsets, and the villas at dusk… and the cruise ships..

Wednesday we saw the impact of Cruise ships on this town …. We awoke to the sight of several large ships anchored in the bay….  our walk for the morning was going to be down the 588 steps to the old port to wander around, and then take the cable car (or donkey’s) back up to the top.

Since Liz’s ankle was sore, we opted to take the ride on the cable car down, at 11am we entered straight into the small cable car, and rode the 60 second ride to the bottom….then there they were… thousands (well hundreds) of people off the boats, all lined up on the pier waiting for the ride on the cable car to the top, to the shops… the queue was easily 100m long… the cable car took 36 people every 2 minutes, so we sat in a café on the pier, soaked up the atmosphere, and waited and by 12:30pm, the queue was much shorter… and so we took the return ride up (we opted not to take a donkey ride up the 588 steps!!).

At the top, the return queue (100m) of all the cruise boat tourists had formed already… I think the cruise boats send people in groups, each allowed a few hours on shore, with strict times to return (all had numbered stickers on their shirts of the time to return).

So we escaped the crowd around the shops, and returned to our peaceful Villa for a siesta & then mid afternoon, we joined all the other Aussies in the pool (at least 4 other couples).

We got talking to a group of three sister-in-laws from Melbourne who arrived this afternoon, and who were in shock over what they had seen of the island so far (just like we did) .. especially when Santorini was touted as the best island in the infamous Greek Islands. We all felt Australia was a much better place for a sun kissed holiday. It was good to know that we weren’t the only ones feeling a little disappointed with the Greek Is experience. The views of the other Aussies at the pool all mentioned Myconos (our next stop) was a much better Island, and much more picturesque. .. we shall see on Thursday

Another night in a restaurant overlooking the wonderful sunset (still only a average meal and not at all cheap), and a great dessert of Baklava !!

We took our 4 hour jetcat ride to Myconos, detouring via a few islands on the way to set down pictures … all appeared similar to what we had seen and experienced on Santorini. We arrived the Myconos port, and were thankful for our tour guides to welcome us (amidst all the local hotel hawkers), and arrange transfer to our hotel .. another hair-raising bus ride, albeit if it was only 10 minutes long.

The hotel was very nice, large well appointed room, with a lovely view, if you do not look down. Unfortunately there is major building work along the edge of the bay, directly in front of the hotel (reclaiming more land I think), hence distracts from the vista, plus lots of truck noise..

The weather is humid, and overcast (hazy or smog??) & flying ants…. so this does not help. This was similar to the quarry beside our hotel in Santorini.

The lack of visible vegetation on the Island (hence baron looking again) was disappointing compared to our expectations. We have 2 days here, before we return to Athens … not sure what we are going to here…. beside vege out??

There is one ancient island of Delos, the birth place of Apollo, which we may visit, …. we don’t have high expectations, based on past experience.